I have been around guns most all of my life. I have no fear of them though I realize some people do and that is fine. Different strokes for different folks, as Sly Stone sang.

I enjoy dove and quail hunting. I spent my last two and a half years of high school at Montgomery County High School in Mt. Vernon with a large group of hunters. The student and teacher parking lots were full of trucks. Those trucks had gun racks that held loaded shotguns and rifles.The keys were in the ignitions and the windows were down when it was warm.

This was during the first years of integration there but we never had a problem! We also did not have blood and gore video games - and, yes, those are a huge problem!

I have donated to the NRA. I support the 2nd Amendment and our right to bear arms. Indeed, I think that right is a key cornerstone to our freedom. In every instance when citizens have given up their guns to their government, those citizens have suffered.

A lot of people carry openly. Others carry concealed weapons. As long as they know how to operate those weapons, that is fine with me. An armed citizen may very well save my life or your’s one day.

Having said all that, it is time to come to grips with the issue of school shootings. There are strategies that would work. They involve prevention and punishment.

Here area few I think would be solid deterrents. What do you think?

• Put prayer back into our schools nationwide.

• Place highly trained armed officers in each school along with a handful of trained teachers or other staffers carrying concealed without student knowledge. They would operate anonymously like air marshals on commercial flights and should be trained to shoot to kill without compunction.

• Make it a felony for a person under age 18 to be in possession of any sort of weapon without adult supervision. Parents or guardians of kids caught with guns without supervision should face the same felony counts as the child and go to jail.

• Make any school shooting a federal offense with a minimum sentence of life in prison with the death penalty a strong possibility. Prosecute to the fullest extent without consideration of the mental health of the shooter and hold the parents accountable with criminal charges as well.

• Immediately arrest any child making a social media threat against a school and prosecute them as adults. Again, hold parents accountable with criminal charges if needed to get their attention.

• Listen to students and take every threat seriously. Apparently none of the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were surprised when Nikolas Cruz opened fire there. They knew it was coming. The adults in that school were not paying attention. The FBI had a tip about Cruz and failed to act. That is simply unacceptable. Has ever a government agency had such a precipitous fall from grace as has the FBI lately?

So, these are a few deterrents. Yes, they might be considered harsh but all the touchy-feely listening sessions, etc. have had no impact. How many more dead kids do you have to hear about before harsh becomes acceptable in dealing with these monsters?